Death
By Coke
By Joshua Frank
22 December, 2006
Countercurrents.org
We
are a country of overweight people. Americans are tipping the scales
in record numbers, with approximately 130 million who are presently
considered overweight or obese. Perhaps most alarmingly of all, half
of all women aged 20 to 39 in the United States are included in these
figures. Many factors contribute to the growing problem, from our sedentary
lifestyles to our overindulgence in high-energy, low nutritional foods.
Dealing with the crisis is not easy. The marketing of energy dense foods
is a multi-billion dollar industry and manufactures of such products
go to great lengths to ensure their shareholders continue to profit
from the sales of nutrition-less foods.
Despite the barrage of marketing
to the contrary, sales pitches, and misinformation, consumption of soda
has been directly linked to both obesity as well as type 2 diabetes.
Soft drinks are packed full of sugar and refined carbohydrates, both
of which are undeniably correlated to these factors. Type 2 diabetes
is also associated with a poor diet that is laden with high-fructose
corn syrup and low in fiber. Research indicates that soft drinks largely
contribute to this growing epidemic, with high school and college age
kids being the most likely to consume sugar laden soda beverages on
a regular basis.
Sugar-sweetened beverages
(SSBs) are bad news, according to health experts, because they contribute
to the obesity epidemic by providing empty calories, that is, calories
that provide little or no nutritional value. Meaning, a person who slugs
down too much soda is swallowing more than their body can handle. And
this added energy isn't healthy energy -- it's energy derived from high-fructose
corn syrup (HFCS), i.e., highly refined sugar that has been chemically
processed in order to excite your taste buds. It has been argued that
too much HFCS in one's diet may offset the intake of solid food, yet
does not produce a positive caloric balance. In turn, this over-consumption
contributes to the slow development of obesity because the person is
consuming more calories than their body can burn. And these days, people
are drinking more soda than ever before. Perhaps not surprisingly, as
portion sizes for soft drinks have increased, so have American waistlines.
Too put this dangerous pattern
in to perspective, one regular 12-ounce can of sugar-sweetened soda
contains approximately 150 calories with close to 50 grams of sugar.
If this is added to the typical American diet, one can of soda per day
could lead to a weight gain of 15 pounds in one year. Currently the
consumption of soda accounts for about 8%-9% of total energy among children
and adults, and studies suggest that it is most certainly having a negative
effect on the people who consume it in such vast quantities. So what's
so wrong with being overweight then, you ask? So what if soda has been
linked to causing obesity? What's wrong with that? Well, plenty say
scores of medical, health and public nutrition experts.
For starters, obesity increases
the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, bowel cancer as well as
high blood pressure. Type 2 diabetes alone can contribute to cardiovascular
disease, retinopathy (blindness), neuropathy (nerve damage), nephropathy
(kidney damage), and other health complications. So if type 2 diabetes
is highly associated with individuals who are obese, and obesity is
linked to SSBs, then type 2 diabetes is highly associated with the consumption
of SSBs because the consumption of SSBs is so highly associated with
causing obesity. In short, if one consumes SSBs on a regular basis,
they are more at risk of developing type 2 diabetes, which itself may
cause many ailments. That's why being overweight is not a good thing
for one's health. And that's why drinking copious amounts of sugar-sweetened
beverages contributes to poor wellbeing byway of obesity and type 2
diabetes.
On top of causing one to
gain unhealthy weight and spurring type 2 diabetes, SSBs may also contribute
to the loss of bone density, which may cause one to be more susceptible
to bone fractures. It has been argued that low bone density may be a
result of high levels of phosphate, which is found in elevated amounts
in sugar-sweetened cola. Such large amounts of phosphate may alter the
calcium-phosphorus ratio in people whose bodies are still developing,
or people who are most likely to consume SSBs, and consequently this
can have a toxic effect on their bone development. If a growing individual
has a low calcium intake it could jeopardize bone mass, which may then
contribute to hip fractures and other bone related disorders later in
life. Drinking a lot of SSBs while your body develops could have lasting,
deadly effects on your health. So while it is clear that soda isn't
good for you, it is also obvious that soda is downright bad for your
health. It can make you overweight, suck the calcium out of your bones,
and increase risk of type 2 diabetes, a leading cause of blindness.
But that's not the kind of news the profiteers of big soda would ever
want you to hear.
The marketing firms that
barrage consumers with ads for their mouth-watering soft drinks hope
to encourage you to drink more of their harmful products, not less of
them. Indeed they have a financial incentive to do so. Their annual
revenues are billions of dollars. To protect their interests, as Prof.
Marion Nestle of NYU notes, the soda industry shells out tons of money
to convince people to consume their products in mass quantities. In
the late 1990s, Coca-Cola spent about $1.6 billion dollars in global
marketing, with over $850 million spent in the United States alone.
With that kind of lavish spending, it is little wonder why Coca-Cola
is such a household name. Clearly, those who advocate for cutting down
on the consumption of SSBs because of their negative health impacts
are up against a very well financed opposition -- not unlike the anti-smoking
activists who take on the shenanigans and deceit of Big Tobacco.
Nevertheless, Coca-Cola,
like its competitors, is extremely savvy. They have inundated schools
with their products. As Michele Simon, the author of Appetite for Profit,
writes, "A 2003 government survey showed that 43 percent of elementary
schools, 74 percent of middle schools, and 98 percent of high schools
sold food through vending machines, snack bars, or other venues outside
the federally supported school meal programs ... With public schools
so desperate for funding, districts are lured into signing exclusive
contracts (also known as "pouring rights" deals) with major
beverage companies -- mainly Coca-Cola and PepsiCo".
In other words, these multinational
corporations give millions of dollars to schools so that their districts
and vending machines exclusively carry their goods. In reality, however,
it comes down to one big clever marketing ploy: In the end these big
corporations have hooked kids on their products while fooling people
into believing they are virtuous corporate citizens because they support
education.
Fortunately there is a growing
movement across the country to ban sodas from schools. Indeed the feisty
Killer Coke campaign, which focuses on the company's labor abuses and
not Coke's negative health implications, has been successful is banning
the product from over 10 major universities in the US. But it would
be wise to not just focus on the company's alleged murders in Colombia,
and instead broaden the struggle against the soda industry by pointing
out their complicity in the obesity epidemic worldwide. Because death
truly is the "real thing".
Joshua Frank is the author of Left Out! How Liberals
Helped Reelect George W. Bush and edits http://www.BrickBurner.org
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